scholarly journals Embrace IR Anxieties (or, Morgenthau's Approach to Power, and the Challenge of Combining the Three Domains of IR Theorizing)

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Guzzini
Keyword(s):  
Theory Building ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Observational Knowledge

Abstract This article addresses the call made by the ISA Sapphire panel to focus on “the opportunities and the challenges of theory-building in interdisciplinary scholarship.” The article focuses on the multiple anxieties that exist in the discipline of IR, its departmental subalternity, its fragmentation of content, its methodological diversity, and its hybrid constitution of practical and observational knowledge. However, rather than arguing for any restriction, the article pleads for these anxieties to be embraced and for IR to be treated as a privileged space in which to integrate that knowledge. It invites scholars to link three distinct yet important domains of IR theorizing: the philosophical, the explanatory, and the practical. It invites the discipline to see the three domains as equally fundamental for its identity. Using Morgenthau's theory of power as a foil, the article shows the need to think about these three domains of theorizing concomitantly, despite the difficulties involved in providing a coherent link between them, something Morgenthau did not achieve.

Can a Theory of Suicide Predict All “Suicides” in the Elderly?

Crisis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoon A. Leenaars
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
Suicide Notes ◽  
Psychiatric Study

Summary: Older adults consistently have the highest rates of suicide in most societies. Despite the paucity of studies until recently, research has shown that suicides in later life are best understood as a multidimensional event. An especially neglected area of research is the psychological/psychiatric study of personality factors in the event. This paper outlines one comprehensive model of suicide and then raises the question: Is such a psychiatric/psychological theory applicable to all suicides in the elderly? To address the question, I discuss the case of Sigmund Freud; raise the topic of suicide and/or dignified death in the terminally ill; and examine suicide notes of the both terminally ill and nonterminally ill elderly. I conclude that, indeed, greater study and theory building are needed into the “suicides” of the elderly, including those who are terminally ill.

Contributions of Contemporary Political Science to an Understanding of the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.J. Matthew Carnes
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Nature And Society

The transformation of political science in recent decades opens the door for a new but so far poorly cultivated examination of the common good. Four significant “turns” characterize the modern study of politics and government. Each is rooted in the discipline’s increased emphasis on empirical rigor, with its attendant scientific theory-building, measurement, and hypothesis testing. Together, these new orientations allow political science to enrich our understanding of causality, our basic definitions of the common good, and our view of human nature and society. In particular, the chapter suggests that traditional descriptions of the common good in Catholic theology have been overly irenic and not sufficiently appreciative of the role of contention in daily life, on both a national and international scale.

Challenges in the Empirical Study of Global Governance Legitimacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Political Communities

This commentary discusses three challenges for the promising and ambitious research agenda outlined in the volume. First, it interrogates the volume’s attempts to differentiate political communities of legitimation, which may vary widely in composition, power, and relevance across institutions and geographies, with important implications not only for who matters, but also for what gets legitimated, and with what consequences. Second, it examines avenues to overcome possible trade-offs from gains in empirical tractability achieved through the volume’s focus on actor beliefs and strategies. One such trade-off is less attention to evolving norms and cultural factors that may underpin actors’ expectations about what legitimacy requires. Third, it addresses the challenge of theory building that can link legitimacy sources, (de)legitimation practices, audiences, and consequences of legitimacy across different types of institutions.

Transdisciplinarity

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
James Mittelman ◽  
Daniel Esser
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Local Dynamics ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Methodological Rigor ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Science Disciplines

This chapter assesses transdisciplinarity as an epistemological and methodological approach to research and teaching in the emerging field of global studies. It posits that the world’s most pressing problems in the areas of migration, health, and intersectional identities, to name a few, are unlikely to be addressed convincingly by inquiries rooted exclusively in singular social science disciplines. At the same time, transdisciplinarity is understood as a means to complement disciplinary research, not to dispense with it. By foregrounding global–local dynamics and their effects across scales, global studies can draw from a wealth of approaches and experiences in interdisciplinary scholarship without becoming entangled in protracted epistemological battles over scholarly turf. This chapter then provides examples of transdisciplinary research in global studies and closes by stressing the importance of disciplinary methodological innovations as building blocks for multimodal designs and arguing for methodological rigor in global studies, whether transdisciplinary or not.

scholarly journals Observation of Chemistry in Protoplanetary Disks

2004 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 411-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Dutrey
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Chemical Properties ◽  
Protoplanetary Disks ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Pms Stars ◽  
Observational Knowledge

Protoplanetary disks are now intensively observed by mm arrays. While resolved images of CO rotation lines permit a better understanding of their physical structure, molecular surveys provided by current mm telescopes are currently sensitivity limited and do not allow a quantitative analysis of the chemical properties of disks. In this paper, I review the actual observational knowledge of the chemistry in the outer disks surrounding low and intermediate PMS stars and traced by mm data.

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